Many textile materials of woven or non-woven nature tend to fray when cut into pieces or shapes and subsequently handled during various operations. It is highly desirable that the cutting of textiles be carried out in a manner preserving the cut edges from fraying or other similar degradation. Indeed, advantages of precision cutting tend to be lost due to fraying and other edge-related concerns.
The prior art includes a number of disclosures of applying liquid polymeric materials for purposes of avoiding textile fraying, or for piece-to-piece bonding purposes in which anti-fray capabilities of bonding agents are noted. Pertinent documents include U.S. Pat. No. 6,630,043 (Sloot), U.S. Pat. No. 5,601,132 (Goodman), U.S. Pat. No. 5,783,623 (Skoufis), U.S. Pat. No. 5,981,034 (Gray et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 5,718,966 (Gray et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 5,538,280 (Gray et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 5,085,917 (Hodnett) and U.S. Pat. No. 4,261,285 (Pearl), and United States Published Patent Applications 2005/0170151 (Dobson et al.) and 2002/0017362 (Covert et al.).
There remains a need for improved high-precision cutting apparatus and methods with textile-preserving anti-fray edge protection.